Browsed byTag: religion

These plans are a scam. They are modern-day snake oil. They are group-think faith healing. If there’s an afterlife, the people running these programs will surely burn in hell. But you can’t pay medical bills with a promissory note of brimstone.

If Charles Dickens were writing a modern day tale about a family of power-hungry evangelicals brought down by their own hypocrisy, greed, and a hint of pool boy sex scandal, you have to figure he’d consider calling them the Falwells. I mean, it’s perfect. Because the Falwells are, well, falling.

The truth is, churches are not a safe place for children. I’m not saying children shouldn’t go to church with their parents, but I am saying that no child should ever be entrusted to a church leader. No child should ever be left alone or in small groups with a pastor or a youth pastor or a priest. The risks are too great.

Preachers are making news this week. Bishop Michael Curry set the royal wedding abuzz with his animated, uplifting sermon about the transformative power of love. And longtime Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson lost his post at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary after delivering one too many sermons urging wives to stay with abusive husbands. Tonight, religious leaders including Bishop Curry will hold a candlelight vigil at the White House. The vigil is part of a movement to “reclaim Jesus” by rejecting…

Q: When is a cake more than a cake? A: Never. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the case against a Colorado baker who refused to design a wedding cake for a gay couple. The baker, Jack Phillips, says he isn’t a bigot and that he’d be happy to sell the couple brownies or cookies or some other baked goods, but he can’t sell them a wedding cake because his religious beliefs lead him to think marriage…

(This week Bill O’Reilly announced that he is “mad at God.” Here’s how I imagine his prayers are going this days.) Dear God, Are you there? Are you paying attention to me? I am aggrieved, God, and confused. I have spent my entire career telling women how to live and how to look. I showered them with my attentions. I sent some of these women helpful examples of pornography and dirty jokes. And what thanks do I get? Not to…

In the year 2000 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declared that employer-provided health insurance must cover contraception. It was clearly discriminatory to deny women coverage for a safe, widely used, highly effective preventive medication. This was a solid decade before the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went into effect, eight years before Obama was elected. But this week, Trump announced he would roll back the ACA mandate that insures contraceptive coverage as part of the preventive healthcare provisions. Trump and the…

Hurricane Harvey continues to bring out the best in many people. Over the past five days, we’ve seen footage of hundreds of citizen-led rescues. These are men and women who climbed aboard their boats and went searching for their stranded neighbors. These are the people who formed a human chain to pull a driver from his sinking car. Even as Mother Nature does her worst, it is gratifying to see humankind do its best. One particularly uplifting story comes from…

My husband and I spent the better part of this week paddling our kayaks across several Colorado mountain lakes. It was blissful. We spent hours disconnected from the world, but we couldn’t completely tune out. When we came back to our rental unit in the evenings, we were stunned by the reports and images of the neo-nazis and white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia. Seeing those angry tiki-toting men chanting racist slurs was horrifying, but more horrifying was the image…